Aloe Vera is a plant. But to many not just an ordinary plant. A plant with a magical touch.

And suddenly it is a hype. You do not want to know what kind of nonsense products are made from the juice of this plant: toothpaste, shampoo, sunbathing gel, nailpolish, make-up remover, body milk, foot-gel, anti wrinkel gel, a beverage that helps when you are ill, helps by digestion, is good for your bones and muscles and god knows what nonsense more.
The stuff seems to be good for almost anything.

And then there is an Aloe vera juice. A friend of mine loves it. So he asked me if there could be made a wine with this. Now that's a challenge !!!
The wine would not only be tastefull but also super healthy.

So for starters I decided to make 5 liter.

I bought the juice at the Action shop. They sell bottles of half a liter and large bottles of 1.5 liter Aloe Vera juice.

I had never tasted this juice and must admit that it had a strange flavor. It reminded me a bit of perfume. However it was not totally unpleasant.

I was however surprised to see that the juice was not clear. It was cloudy because it contained small parts of the Aloe Vera plant.

The information on the packaging.

The packaging of the bottle indicates that there is 8.3 gram sugar dissolved in 100ml juice. That's 83 gram sugar per liter.

Measurements.

To make a pleasant wine alcohol and acid need to be in balance. To bring these two up to the right level we need to know what the juice itself contains.

The packaging indicates that every liter juice contains 83 gram sugar. But I really like to see for myself what the juice contains.

First acidity.

I measured acidity by titration. It was very low.
Measuring acidity is something every winemaker should be able to do. If you have no experience on how to measure acidity read my stories about it which can be found in the archive or on my index page which can be found here.

As you can see the colorchange took place at the 3 mark, The juice therefore contains 3 gram acid per liter. An acidity of 3.

Next the SG.

The refractometer indicated an SG of 1035.

My SG-tabel, which you can download here, indicates at an acidity of 3 and an SG of 1035 that there is 71 gram sugar per liter present.

So the packaging indicated a higher sugar level as I could measure. !!
I always presume my own measurements to be accurate and I used the 71 gram per liter which I measured as a starting point.

The calculations.

I was going to make 5 liter wine.

So first I calculated how much sugar I would need to add.

To obtain 1% alcohol in 1 liter wine you will need 18 gram sugar.

I wanted the white wine I was going to make not to be too alcoholic. An alcohol percentage of 11% is generally sufficient for most white wines.

According to my measurements there is 3 gram acid per liter present. And an acidity of 3 is way too low.

I did not want the wine to be too acidic though. This would be a mild wine. An acidity of 5 would be sufficient in my opinion.

Now if you want to have 5 liter wine with an aqcidity of 5 there needs to be 5 liter x 5 gram acid = 25 gram acid dissolved in the juice.

The juice however actually contained 4.5 liter x 3 = 13.5 gram acid.

So to bring the acidity up to the level I wanted it to be I would need to add 25 - 13.5 = 11.5 gram acid.

I decided to add citric acid to the juice as that brings freshness along. As citric acid is however more acidic as tartaric acid I decided to add just 10 gram citric acid.

Extra

When I tasted the juice (it is indeed quite pleasant) I noticed that it had body. However I suspected part of the body being realised by the sugar. So if the wine fermented dry there would be no sugar left and therefore part of the body would have disappeared.

That's why I decided to add banana's to the juice. Banana's offer the winemaker many advantages. First they add body to your wine. Next they also add some sugar. Banana's add nutrients to your must, and banana's help clearing your wine. Last but not least: yeast really loves banana. So a must that has banana's added seems to ferment more healthy as a must that has no added banana's.

Therefore I always keep a small volume of peeled banana's in my freezer.

I always freeze the banana's in zip-lock bags each containing about 500 gram. This bag contained 489 gram. Does not seem to be a lot but remember we are only making 5 liter.

Day 1

First I made a yeast starter.

I always make a yeast starter. It has a lot of advantages. First it makes sure that my wine is hit by an enormous healthy, vigorously fermenting yeast colony. This helps quickly starting fermentation of the must. And if the yeast starter is made from the same juice the wine will be made off, I know for sure that the must will ferment. If the starter made from the juice will have trouble fermenting the must will also be troublesome.
Anyone wanting to know how to make a yeast starter, or wants more background information on this subject can read my web-log entry on this subject by clicking here.

So, as I did not know how yeast would react on Aloe Vera I made the yeast starter with 1 liter of the juice in stead of using applejuice.

Day 2

The yeast starter was indeed fermenting vigorously. I did not expect anything else with such a healthy miracle juice.....

So I could proceed with preparing the must.

I had used 1 liter of the juice for making myn yeast starter. So there remained 3.5 liter juice.

As per my calculations I needed to add 671 gram sugar to my must. However as you will know I already added 100 gram sugar to the yeast starter. So therefore I needed to add just 571 gram sugar to the must.

I poured the juice in a large pan and poured the 3.5 liter juice into it. I added the 571 gram sugar and 10 gram citric acid. By stirring I slowly dissolved the sugar and acid.

I was not sure how the juice would react on heat (flavor might alter) and therefore the juice was not heated for dissolving the ingredients.

The banana's were also added and 5 liter nutrients were aded.

The must was the poured into a primary and the yeast starter was added to that.

The primary was then covered with a cheesecloth fastened with a rubber band.

5 Days later.
5 Days later the must was transferred to a 5 liter carboy covered with a rubber bung with an airlock.

The racking however made me loose a bit of the must and therefore my carboy was not filled to the brim. I therefore topped the carboy up with some Aloe vera juice form a half-liter bottle.

Next the wine was allowed to ferment dry in the carboy.

A few months later.

The wine had fermented dry, cleared completely and therefore was bottled. This wine can be consumed immediately. I will not make it again for myself. It was not bad but just not to my liking. My friend for whom I made it was enthousiastic though.